


The Unwritten History of the Time War

by aces



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Time War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-20
Updated: 2010-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:23:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>All these things are true.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unwritten History of the Time War

**Author's Note:**

> Fitz sings "Greenback Dollar," perhaps best known as sung by the Kingston Trio.

Timeline One

_Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner. Human. Born on Earth in the year 1936 ('Common Era'). Joined the Doctor in the year 1963 (CE), with whom he remained throughout the Time War, fighting in many battles including Arcadia, Polymos, and Dronid. Became a guru for lost hitchhikers and even more lost souls._

The man loped along the road at a sedate enough pace, guitar case banging rhythmically at his side. His back was covered by the extra-large duffel bag he had strapped around his shoulders. He looked like he'd been on the road a while, and was content to stay on the road a while longer.

The other man slowed down his heli-car until it hovered in place next to the walker. "Want a lift?" he asked.

His fellow traveler looked up, took in the look of him with a long, considering stare—tall, thin, wearing a dark jumper and darker jeans—and then he shrugged off his guitar case and duffel. "Ta," he said, throwing his duffel over the side of the heli-car into the back. He more carefully set the guitar in the front before jumping in next to it.

"Where you headed?" the heli-car driver asked after his passenger had made himself comfortable and they'd started moving again.

"The end of the road," the passenger said. "That's the point of this road, yeah? It's a whole exercise in meditation, or something. I read about it in the _Hitchhiker's Guide_, under the section 'Really Boring Things to Do When in the Midst of an Identity Crisis.'" He looked at his fellow traveler and added confidentially, "You're really supposed to _walk_ the whole length of the road, according to the locals, but I couldn't pack enough food to last that long. And I'm already knackered." He settled back in his seat again. "I'm Fitz, by the way."

"John," said the driver, not looking away from the road. "How long've you been walking it, then?"

"Just a few days," Fitz said. "Some people actually live along here, make it their lifestyle, you know? They're nice. They give me dinner sometimes, in exchange for some music."

John looked around. The road snaked through a valley in the midst of steep mountains on either side. Green along most of the mountainsides, the caps still covered in snow despite the mid-summer breeze at the travelers' level. One sun was high above them, the other creeping ever upward. "Not a bad place to make home," John remarked, taking in a deep breath of the fresh air.

Fitz shook his head. "Not bad at all. What brings you here then, John?"

"Doing some traveling," the driver replied. "Seeing a bit of the universe. And you? In the midst of an identity crisis, are you?"

"Nah, not really," Fitz said. "Or, well, yeah, okay, I guess I am. I thought I was done with identity crises a few years back when I accepted once and for all that I wasn't even in my original body—don't ask—but, well, I don't really know what to do with myself now." He half-laughed, in a way that completely failed to make his fellow traveler think he was amused. "I suppose that's true of a lot of soldiers after they get out of a war."

"You?" John said, glancing at him askance. He took in Fitz's thin, lanky body in black trench and blue jeans; his grey eyes and just-perceptibly graying hair. "You don't look much like a soldier."

"I wasn't much of one, either," Fitz said. "But I was in a war nevertheless. And now it's over and now…I'm trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself."

"And you think this walking thing will help you?"

Fitz shrugged, relaxing even further back against his seat and closing his eyes against the sunlight. "It's a way to pass the time," he said.

John winced, but Fitz still had his eyes closed.

*

"Have you ever been in a war?" Fitz asked. He'd woken from his nap, asked if John wanted him to drive for a while, and then sat and stared at the passing landscape for a while when John assured him he was fine.

"Yes," John said simply. "I didn't like it much. Why?"

"I've been through loads of wars," Fitz said. "I haven't liked any of them. So why do people keep having them?"

John snorted and rested one of his arms along the side of the heli-car. "You ever find the answer to that, you'll have solved one of the universe's biggest problems."

Fitz half-smiled, without paying much attention, and asked, "Mind if I smoke?"

John's face tightened in a frown, but he said, "Go ahead." He watched out of the corner of his eye as Fitz dug around in his trench for a lighter and packet of cigarettes. "Doesn't that make your walking a bit more difficult?"

"Yeah," Fitz said. "I'm quitting, though. All part of the process. This is only my second fag of the day." He cupped his hand around the light and cig and then breathed in deeply after he got it lit. John caught a whiff of the cigarette smoke as it drifted toward him and breathed in deeply himself. Fitz caught him and smirked. "Gave up the habit yourself sometime, did you?"

"Long, long time ago," John said softly. "Lifetimes ago, sometimes feel like. Never quite leaves your lungs, though, does it?"

Fitz shook his head, and they both breathed deeply of the cigarette smoke.

*

"So what have you learned on your travels, Fitz?" John asked, as the second sun began to set. He'd put up the forceshield around the heli-car in deference to the deepening cold, and the shafts of red-gold light cutting the mountains in half made for spectacular viewing. Fitz was captivated, and it made John smile to see that look of wonder on his passenger's face. "On your way to resolving your non-identity crisis?"

"I think," Fitz said after consideration—he'd taken off his trench coat only so that he could drape it over himself like a blanket—"I think you become more like yourself the older you get. No matter how many bodies you switch," and John laughed at that, surprising Fitz into a laugh of his own. He sobered. "The problem is…I spent so much of my life doing one thing, I'm not sure I know how to do anything else."

"Soldiering, you mean?" John asked, and held his breath.

"Traveling," Fitz said with finality. "Have you spent a lot of your life traveling, John?"

"Most of it," John said. "I could never sit still; my people were content to watch the universe but I—"

"Had to see it for yourself," Fitz finished for him with a secret grin. "You sound just like a friend of mine. Well, and that's the thing, innit? Once you get used to always being on the move, it's hard to stop. So even though this whole walkabout meditation thing is supposed to help me focus my inner energies thingy on figuring out who the sod I am, all it's really doing is—"

"Keeping you traveling," John said for him. "You seem awfully self-aware for a man in the midst of an identity crisis."

Fitz shrugged. "With as many alien intelligences as I've had digging around my brainpan, it's sort of a hazard," he confessed.

*

"Sing," John commanded after they'd made camp and finished eating dinner. Fitz had cooked up a pretty mean stew from the fresh veggies and freeze-packaged meat John had brought, while John had set up the sleeping bags and tinkered with the heli-car. The three moons were full, each one larger than the last, and the light they shed on the mountains and on the road was fantastic, as John himself had proclaimed.

Fitz fetched his guitar case without demur and played for a while without singing, a cigarette dangling from his lips. It was only his third cig of the day. And then he started in with words matching the chords he played, a defiant song that John recognized from another planet entirely.

"And I don't give a damn about a greenback dollar," Fitz sang, "spend it fast as I can. For a wailin' song and a good guitar, the only things I understand, oh boy, the only things I understand."

Eventually Fitz put the guitar aside and said, "Tell me a story."

"You wha?" John said, startled. His thoughts had been drifting, released by the music.

"Only fair," Fitz argued. "I can't provide all the entertainment. So unless you have an unexpected gift for playing the pots and spoons, tell me a story."

"I don't know any stories," John protested weakly.

"Make one up." Fitz was implacable.

"Alright, alright," John sighed. "A story. A story." He looked around for inspiration, caught sight of the moonlight reflecting against the mountaintops. "Okay.

"Once upon a time," John said, "(because you have to start any good story with that), once upon a time there lived a man who liked to travel.

"Now this guy, he loved the road. Metaphorical or physical, he loved traveling for its own sake. It was a great way to meet people, for one thing; he was always picking up fellow travelers, strays and waifs and orphans looking—well, looking for a bit of their own identity, I suppose. So this man and his friends got into scrapes, jumped into adventures, and collectively had the times of their lives."

John stopped speaking. Fitz raised his eyebrows. "That's it?"

"It's a story," John said defensively. "I never said I was very good at telling them, did I?" He paused. "Anyway, that's not the point. The point is—I think you're on the right track with this road idea, Fitz. It's not the destination, it's the journey, sort of thing."

Fitz looked at him thoughtfully. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe you're right after all."

They went to bed soon after that, and Fitz fell asleep under the stars and the moons for the fourth night in a row. When he woke up the next morning, his new friend's sleeping bag was gone, his heli-car was gone, and the man himself was gone.

Fitz shrugged. "Ah well," he said aloud and lit up his first cigarette of the day.

 

* * *

Timeline Two

_Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner. Human. Born on Earth in the year 1936 ('Common Era'). Joined the Doctor in the year 1963 (CE), with whom he remained throughout the Time War, fighting in many battles including Arcadia, Polymos, and Dronid. After the war, he went on to become a sort of roving revolutionary, moving from planet to planet inciting rebellions against the static status quo._

The young man with graying hair looked up as a new prisoner, yelling and struggling, joined him in his cell. The guards slammed the door shut on him. The new prisoner went silent instantly.

He turned around, breathing heavily, and surveyed his new quarters. He met the young man's eye and nodded, once, warily. The young man nodded back, his own guard up, sitting still and silent on the bunk against the wall opposite the door.

"So," said the newcomer. "Why're _you_ here?"

"Making a nuisance of myself," he replied, not moving from his seat. "You?"

"The same, sort of," said the other man. "What's your name?"

"Fitz Kreiner," said his cell mate. "Yours?"

"Smith," said the stranger, curtly. He sat down on the bunk against the wall to the right of Kreiner's. "Comparatively comfy," he said after bouncing up and down lightly, testing the mattress.

Kreiner smirked and leant back against the wall, allowing his body to relax. "Been in many prisons, have you?"

"The odd two or seven," Smith said airily. "You?"

"The odd three or fifteen," Kreiner replied, his tone just as casual, and Smith blinked. "It rates as a seven overall, I think."

"Only a seven?"

"You haven't had the food yet."

Smith looked downcast.

"Seems like it's easy to get throw in prison on this planet," he said after a moment of poking at a hole he found in the thin blanket lying on his mattress.

"It is," Fitz said. "The government doesn't like people stepping out of line. Stepping outside their boxes and categories. I've never really liked governments like that."

Smith looked up swiftly at that. "You ever done anything about governments like that?"

Kreiner raised his eyebrows and looked at the other man. It seemed like a casual onceover, but his hands remained poised on the edge of the bed, ready to push himself off at a moment's notice. "You think I'm gonna say anything to a question like _that_ when I'm in prison and I've not even known you five seconds?"

Smith shrugged. "You never can tell?" he said, and Fitz snorted.

"I have," Smith said, and Kreiner looked at him again. "Sometimes I'm so good I can take 'em down in a night. Ever heard of Terra Alpha?"

"Fantastic blues," Fitz said dreamily, and Smith smiled at him, affectionately.

"Yeah," he said. "_Absolutely_ fantastic." He hesitated. "Why you here, then? On this planet, I mean?"

"Work, natch," Kreiner said. "This is one of the few planets in the galaxy these days where you can still find any."

"Might have something to do with that government," Smith suggested.

"Yeah, putting half your population in prison half the time does free up a lot of jobs," Fitz replied, deadpan. "Not to mention creating them. Need a lot of guards, don't you?"

"So what do you do, when you're not in a cell?"

"This and that," Kreiner said. "Musician, when I can, but I've done other things as needed."

"Musician?" Smith brightened. "I used to play the spoons. And the recorder."

Kreiner gave him a strange look. "Well, I did," Smith muttered, looking away.

"You look more like a violinist," Fitz said, after looking him over again, his eyes lingering on Smith's ears, and then his leather coat. "Some kind of fiddler."

It was Smith's turn to give him an unreadable look. "So how did a musician make a nuisance of himself?" he asked after a moment.

Kreiner grinned and finally let go of the bed, folding his arms in front of himself. "Playing music too loudly, of course," he said. He leaned back again, rested his head against the wall and shut his eyes. "I think it might have had something to do with the particular music."

"Which music was that then?"

"Protest songs." Smith laughed, unexpectedly, appreciatively.

"And they locked you up for that?" he said, sobering. "Bloody officious government, sounds like. Somebody _should_ sort 'em."

"Oh yeah?" Kreiner opened one eye to peer at his cellmate. "And how do you propose somebody go about sorting 'em? Load of guns and grenades, is that it?"

"Nah," Smith said. "That'd just leave bloodstains on the carpet. Impossible to get out, bloodstains. Better just to take the power out of their hands and put it in other people's."

"Who's to say they wouldn't turn out just as corrupt?" Kreiner asked, closing his eyes again and shifting in order to get more comfortable.

"Only way to find out is let 'em have power, innit?"

Before Kreiner could respond, they heard a commotion on the other side of their cell door. "What's that?" Smith said, standing up.

"Another new cellmate, probably," Kreiner said, sounding disinterested, even if he did sit a little straighter and open his eyes. His hands fell to his sides again.

"Nah, doesn't sound quite right." Smith moved closer to the front of the cell, pressing his ear against the door. "Sounds like they're fighting in there."

Kreiner stayed still, watching the other man.

"I really think they're fighting." Smith twisted his neck to look back at the seated young man with graying hair. "I heard there were all sorts of resistance cells on this planet. Think there's a bit of liberation going on?"

"That's what _you_ hope," Kreiner retorted. "Who's to say those resistance cells are any better than the current government?"

"Depends on who's running 'em," Smith said. "I've heard one group in particular's very good at taking as few lives as possible. They've got some interesting ideas about how to rule, too."

"How would you know that?"

Smith shrugged. "Read one of their manifestos," he grinned, just as all hell broke loose.

The fighting they'd overheard broke into the cells; shouts, scuffling, and damnably frustrating for the prisoners because they couldn't see a damned thing. Fitz jumped up and joined Smith at the cell door, pulling something out of his trousers pocket. He pushed Smith out of the way, a businesslike shove that held no animosity and surprised the other man with its strength. Smith stared down in astonishment as Kreiner aimed a long, thin silver tool at the cell door.

"Sonic screwdriver," Fitz said over the noise outside. His voice was conversational, even as his stance was alert and his hand steady on the screwdriver, suppressed energy that hadn't been there before, even when his new cellmate had first entered. "You made it for me, don't you remember?" He got the door open, elbowed a guard who tumbled toward him exactly at that moment, and dragged one of the non-uniformed men toward him by the sleeve. "Keep them steady," he said to the new man in a low voice. "Watch out for Kieran, especially; he's new at this and likely to lose his cool, yeah?"

"Gotcha, Fitz," said the young man, looking curiously at Fitz's cellmate. He jerked his chin toward Smith. "He alright?"

Fitz barely even turned his head in Smith's direction, a strange half-smile twisting his lips. "I'll sort him, don't worry. Shoo."

He released his—friend? Comrade? Lieutenant?—back into the fray and turned back to the other man. He stood tall, calm. "Doctor. You going to join us or what?"

"What," the Doctor said, staring at his old friend. "I'd say you've got this pretty well covered. You used to hate playing at revolutionaries, Fitz."

"Yeah," Fitz said. "I'm not exactly good for much else these days, though, am I? You saw to that. Traveling with you for so long saw to that. Your _war_ saw to that. You think I could go back to a plant shop? Or just bumming around, playing my guitar? Yeah, right."

The Doctor drew back a step. "I'm sorry," he said.

Fitz half-smiled. "Nah," he said. "No worries. Might as well put my skills to good use, right? And this way maybe I can stop a few stupid sods from accidentally killing themselves for the joy of the fight." He looked distant as he surveyed the people fighting around him, a clinical detachment the Doctor knew he'd never seen on his friend's face even at the end of the war. "These idiots have never seen war, not properly." He looked at the Doctor again. "And they don't need to."

The Doctor looked sad, and nodded, and started to walk away. He stopped, though, and turned back. His face was shadowed. "How did you know it was me?"

Fitz snorted. "You're wearing my coat, you git."

 

* * *

Timeline Three

_Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner. Human. Born on Earth in the year 1936 ('Common Era'). Joined the Doctor in his travels 1963 (CE), with whom he remained throughout the Time War, fighting in many battles including Arcadia, Polymos, and Dronid. The events he witnessed, and those in which he participated, drove Kreiner mad. His last known whereabouts were in a sanitarium, under medical supervision._

"Don't be absurd," Fitz said to his companion. "That's not even possible." They walked along a gravel path through the formal gardens, the hospital buildings distant but still large. It was a sunny day. "I think I would _know_ if that were possible."

"Would you?" said his companion, raising an eyebrow, putting his hands in his coat pockets. "How much do you think you know anyway?"

"Enough," Fitz said, not sounding so sure. "I've learnt a lot, after all."

"Of course you have." His companion sounded just the tiniest smidge condescending, which was a riot, considering who his companion was. But before Fitz could answer, the world around him changed.

He wasn't in the garden anymore. Different field, different time of day. Different year. A bomb was screaming as it came closer. There were already fires all around him.

"Not again," Fitz said through gritted teeth, and he ducked for cover, unable to hold back a scream when the world exploded into light and fire around him.

*

"It's ridiculous," Fitz snapped. The garden was still sunny, the breeze playing with his short sleeves and making the hairs on his forearms shiver. "Totally stupid."

"Is it?" said his companion. "You seem awfully sure."

"Of course I'm sure."

"But how can you be? If you observe something, doesn't that make it true?"

"No," Fitz scrabbled. They were sitting on a bench, under a tree, enjoying the sunshine. "No, how could it? What if your observations are wrong? What if you're not perceiving something right?"

"Who's to say your observations and perceptions are wrong? What's acting as the outside, unprejudiced judge on that score?"

"There isn't any," Fitz said. "Isn't that the point? Everybody sees everything differently."

"So then," said his companion in triumph, "how can you be so bloody sure?"

*

"Look," Fitz said, as he and his companion walked down one of the many gravel paths in the gardens. "I know what I know, and I know that you can't exist."

"That's awfully rude," his companion said. He adjusted his armor. Fitz hated seeing him in that armor; but then, he never particularly cared to look at his companion anyway.

"Sometimes," said Fitz, "I'm rude. Deal."

"Fitz?" It was a different voice, and for a moment Fitz was afraid to turn around and see who might be talking to him. "Fitz, it's Jamal. Would you mind turning around?"

"Jamal," Fitz grinned in relief. Jamal was definitely real. Jamal was solid, and short (though he never liked to hear that), and very good at holding onto people when they suddenly found themselves somewhere else entirely. Fitz turned around, grinned at the nurse, and then saw who was standing behind him.

"Oh shit," Fitz said.

*

"Fitz, it's me," said the Doctor.

"Of course it's you," Fitz answered. "I can see that for myself."

The Doctor looked surprised. "You can?"

"Of course I can!" Fitz snapped. After a few minutes, Jamal had left them alone in the garden. He hadn't gone far, probably; Fitz had noticed that when other patients had guests a nurse or other staff member was always handily near by. Just in case. Fitz assumed he was glad Jamal was near by, if things went pear-shaped again. "I'm not crazy, Doctor!" He glanced up at the hospital buildings, large even in the distance. "Okay, so maybe I am, but I'm not _that_ crazy." He folded his arms across his chest and stared at the Doctor defiantly.

The Doctor looked back at him in concern, a worried look that crinkled his eyes and scrunched his forehead and was so achingly familiar that Fitz wanted to run away. He wouldn't get very far if he did, he knew; there were fences and guards and nurses and fields and roads and people, people out there beyond the grounds that Fitz didn't know, and that sort of scared the crap out of him these days, but he still wanted to run away from that look of concern.

"Don't look at me like that," he said and turned away.

"Fitz," the Doctor sounded hesitant. Fitz started walking, and he heard the Time Lord follow him, feet crunching in the gravel. Fitz stopped and whirled about.

"You _are_ real!" he yelled, and the Doctor froze as well.

"Yes," he said cautiously. "Fitz, why wouldn't I be?"

"If your feet didn't crunch in the gravel," Fitz explained. "I've tried telling him a million times that's one of a dozen ways I know he's not real, but he always argues with me anyway."

"Fitz? Who argues with you?"

Fitz looked shifty. "Nobody," he said and turned around to walk some more.

"Fitz," the Doctor repeated. "Fitz, what's wrong with you? Your nurse…he wouldn't really tell me anything. About why you're here. Can you? Will you please?"

"I'm crazy, Doctor," Fitz laughed. "I would have thought that was pretty obvious."

"No, Fitz, I don't believe that," the Doctor sounded very patient. "I think something else is wrong. If you could just tell me your—your symptoms, I'm sure we could get to the bottom of this."

"Symptoms? Get to the bottom of this? Do you have a solution, Doctor? Do you have a cure? You always have an answer, except when you don't."

"Fitz, would you please look at me?"

"Why do you want me to look at you?"

"Please." The Doctor gently took hold of his sleeve, brought their walk to a slow halt. Fitz still wouldn't quite meet his eye. "What's wrong? What happens? Who do you argue with about their supposed existence?"

"Me," Fitz said in a small voice. "I'm haunted by my own ghost."

The Doctor was silent.

"Sometimes he looks like me. Really me," Fitz went on, staring hard at the Doctor's velvet-encased right elbow. He hadn't even told Jamal about this, but it was the Doctor; what harm could it do to tell him? It'd probably turn out he wasn't really real either; his hallucination was just better at faking it than Fitz's apparition. Figured. Bloody Time Lords, having to be superior even in their hauntings. "Sometimes he looks like—like other people I might have been. Kode. Father Kreiner. Who I would have been if I'd stayed on Earth instead of going with you and Sam. I think that one might be the worst of the lot, actually," Fitz added reflectively. "I think his life ends—badly."

"What else?" the Doctor asked. "Nurse Jamal said you—you scream sometimes."

Fitz took a deep breath. The Doctor's right elbow remained as fascinating as ever. "I don't stay here," he said. "In the gardens, in my room. I go to other places. Guernica, or the Twenty-Second Era of Bounty and Hope on Cygnus Beta, or Drebnar, or Gallifrey, or Siberia, or that one planet where I almost got executed 'cause I was flirting with their princess, but then _she_ died 'cause the Daleks came—"

"I see," the Doctor said. "Flashbacks."

Fitz shook his head and closed his eyes. "I've had flashbacks. I am the _king_ of flashbacks," he said. "This is worse. I'm really back there. Can smell everything." He shivered and looked out across the sunny garden.

"Does anything cause these—moments? Anything in particular that you've noticed?" The Doctor had that tone of voice he got, when he was deep into some sort of puzzle and thought he might be onto something. Not excited, not yet, but concentrated and concerned and completely focused on the job at hand.

Never mind that the job at hand was Fitz. Fitz tried to concentrate just as hard as the Doctor. "Um. I haven't really noticed anything. I'm usually talking to-to myself right before it happens." He laughed, unhappily. "But then, him and Jamal are about the only people I talk to anymore these days."

He glanced up, saw the scrunched-up frown over the Doctor's blue eyes, and quickly looked away. "Are the…incidents in any way related to your conversations with your—apparition?" The Doctor didn't appear to have noticed his old friend looking at him.

Fitz frowned as well, thinking hard, trying to remember. "No," he said at last. "Well, not necessarily. Not to what I might have been thinking about by myself, either," he added before the Doctor could question him, and he was actually rather proud of that. He remembered doing this, before. It was kinda fun. "I really don't think there's any pattern to it, Doctor."

"Hmm." The Doctor's fingers drummed against his trouser leg, and they started walking again. "No apparent causational relation between thought, conversation, apparition, and change in spatial-temporal location." Fitz smiled, outright _grinned_, at the technobabble, and almost started skipping. "You actually feel as if you're in a different place entirely? No remnant of the grounds here, or your room, or wherever you might be when it happens?"

"No," Fitz shook his head. He took a deep breath. "The docs here, they all agree with your first thought—flashbacks. They don't quite understand how I could have flashbacks of so _many_ times and places, but they just think I took a lot of really, really good drugs."

The Doctor didn't answer, didn't seem to have heard him. "Look," Fitz said, coming to a stop again and actually looking the Doctor in the eye. It made him dizzy to do so, for some reason, as if his eyes couldn't quite decide where the Doctor was actually standing. Which probably proved the Time Lord was just an hallucination, but Fitz wasn't going to worry about that for a moment. "Do you really think you can help me? That you can sort this out?"

The Doctor didn't answer him for a moment, just looked off to the side, still. Then he looked up at Fitz and said, simply, "I'm sorry, Fitz."

"Oh." Fitz didn't know where to look. He turned and started striding down the graveled path.

"Fitz, wait." The Doctor caught up with him easily but didn't try to catch hold of him, grab his arm, anything like that, for which Fitz was grateful. He might have tried to fight him off, and then Jamal might have gotten involved, and it would have ended very messily. "Please. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I think it's too late. If I'd found you sooner perhaps—"

"Never mind," Fitz said, face still averted. He wished they put pockets in their hospital outfit trousers, so he'd have some place to put his hands. "It's alright, I didn't really expect you to say yes."

"Didn't you?" the Doctor retorted. He sounded angry; his voice was all funny as if he were trying to change accents or something. "Aren't I supposed to be the one who fixes things, makes them right?"

"No, Doctor." Fitz sighed. "You're the one who keeps bloody trying after everyone else has given up, gone home, drunk a beer, and gone for a kip. Half the time you only win because everyone else has forfeited."

"Don't say that." The Doctor grabbed Fitz's arm. There was a strange strength to it, different from what Fitz remembered. Maybe. It was so hard to tell. "Don't _say_ that. It's not true. You—you never gave up and went home to get a beer."

"Didn't I?" Fitz shrugged out of the Doctor's grip and hugged himself. "How d'you think I ended up here? I told you, it's okay, Doc. I never expected to see you again anyway so just—never mind."

They stood together on the path, silently, and Fitz stared off into the distance. The warm late spring breeze blew against some tall grasses in the distance, whispering through them. It was a lovely, lovely day.

"Fitz," said the Doctor at last, and his voice was painfully gentle, "why won't you look at me?"

Fitz ducked his head, and the Doctor reached out to touch his chin, lift his friend's face. Fitz met his gaze after a long, agonizing hesitation.

"You can't be real," Fitz's voice broke. "I saw you die, Doctor. You're just very good at faking it—better than I am. I can hear your steps and feel your skin and everything."

"I'm going to ask you a very silly question," the Doctor said after looking his friend over, "but I want you to answer it anyway. Okay?"

"Okay," Fitz nodded. The Doctor belatedly let go of his chin.

"What do I look like?" he asked.

Fitz frowned in puzzlement but dutifully answered the Doctor's very silly question. He was usually pretty good about following the Doctor's lead. "Like you always do. Curly hair, blue eyes, frockcoat. You're a bit shorter than me, and you've got soft skin, and I really wish you wouldn't look so sad at me, thanks."

The Doctor nodded, and he took Fitz's hand. "Okay," he said. "Would it be better or worse if I were just a trick of time, Fitz, like the other tricks of time following you around?"

Fitz considered. It was a bit odd, the Doctor holding his hand so casually yet so tightly—the Doctor had always been more likely to snog him than hold his hand, Fitz remembered—but he wasn't going to mention anything. He sort of liked having somebody else to cling to for a while. Somebody who wasn't one of the nurses, or Jamal, who was probably getting tired of pulling Fitz out of one of his screaming fits. Fitz should thank him for that one of these days, when he thought of it.

The Doctor had asked him a question. He needed to concentrate. "I'm not sure," he told the Time Lord finally. The world had stilled around them, the way it did sometimes, when the wind died down and nearby conversations quieted, and everything went peaceful. It was another sunny day, and the gardens were stunning. "I'd like to think you were really here, dropping by to say hello, but I'm just not sure I can believe it."

The Doctor nodded again. "Then remember none of this, if it helps," he said, and pulled Fitz close in order to drop a kiss on his forehead. Fitz had a weird momentary jarring in perception, with the Doctor leaning down a tiny bit to give him the kiss, and for an instant he thought he saw somebody else standing in front of him, somebody in dark clothes with barely any hair at all, but then it was gone again, and it was just him and the Doctor, and not even a ghost between them. "Good-bye, Fitz."

"Good-bye, Doctor." Fitz smiled, suddenly and brilliantly, glancing up at the Doctor. "It really was very nice to see you again."

 

* * *

Timeline Four

_Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner. Human. Born on Earth in the year 1936 ('Common Era'). Joined the Doctor in the year 1963 (CE), with whom he remained throughout the Time War, fighting in many battles including Arcadia, Polymos, and Dronid. Disappeared after the Time War. Neither his continued existence or non-existence can be confirmed at this time._

Fitz was walking to his flat after a quick grocery run, hefting two full paper bags of food, before he went out to the pubs for the evening. His mp3 player hummed in his ears, drumbeat crashing against his eardrums. He nodded his head along to the music, not thinking about much of anything.

Somebody walked around the corner just as he reached his building at the end of the block. Fitz frowned at the retreating back sporting a black leather jacket. And then he shook himself, shifted one bag to his other arm, and went to open the front door.

*

It was late, or early, depending on your point of view. Fitz had just crashed on his bed, after brushing his teeth and putting on a CD. The stereo would automatically shut itself off after an hour and automatically turn itself back on in five hours when it was time to wake Fitz up to go to work. Fitz lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling and not thinking about much of anything. He'd fall asleep soon enough. He usually did.

The phone rang.

Fitz frowned. Nobody called him, unless it was work, and work was most definitely not open yet. He flipped over to the edge of the bed and picked up the receiver. "Hello?" he said.

Silence answered him, and then a click, and then the dial tone. Fitz shivered and hung up the phone.

He made it all the way through the CD twice before he finally fell asleep.

*

It was open mic night at one of Fitz's regular bars. He made the rounds methodically, always playing on nights when he didn't have an actual paying gig or work. The more nights he played, the more gigs he got. He was pretty cool with that.

And tonight was a good night, with just the right kind of atmosphere and energy, and an appreciative audience, and Fitz was soaring without fear of crashing any time soon. When the music was good, really good, he was in a zone of such total concentration that he stopped thinking, his brain completely clear and pristine. He finished his song and looked up with a grin at the applause, raising the tumbler sitting next to him in thanks.

And there, through the alternating dim and glare from the lights trained toward the makeshift stage, he could see somebody sitting alone at a table shoved in toward the back wall. The man stood up, still applauding. He was tall, wearing a black leather jacket.

He looked at Fitz, finished applauding, and then walked out of the bar.

Fitz frowned.

*

"Thank you," Fitz smiled at the customer as he handed over her change, not really thinking about what he was doing 'cause it was so automatic, "and have a nice day. I can help the next person!" he called as she walked away, turning toward the queue. The store was loud, filled as always with the white noise and static of dozens of conversations, orders, rants, children's cries, underlying music. "Whoever's—ready," he finished when the tall man in black leather strode up to his counter.

"I'd like to buy this," the man said in a strong Northern accent, and it took Fitz a long moment to wrench his attention away from the man's face down to the object the man had set down on the counter. It was a hardback with the dust jacket missing, the corners badly mangled, and some pages definitely dogeared.

"We don't sell used books here," Fitz said. "Where on earth did you find this?"

"Shoved in the back of the shelf behind a lot of other books," the man said. "I felt sorry for it. Pages 125 and 126 are missing, so can I get a discount from what the price says?"

Fitz stared at him. "No," he said with finality.

The man's face fell. "Aww!" he said. "Oh, alright then, never mind. I'd still like to buy it." He leant forward. "And your queue is only getting longer."

Fitz rang him up and handed him back his change with barely another word. "Thank you," the tall man in black leather said, looking directly into Fitz's eyes when Fitz handed him his receipt, and then he turned and walked away.

Fitz was shaking as he turned to the next customer.

*

Fitz hummed under his breath to the music thrumming through his earphones. It was late, or early, depending on your point of view, and he had drunk an awful lot at the bars as he played. His guitar banged against his back as he walked down the street.

The tall bloke in the black leather leaned against the front door of his building, waiting for him.

Fitz stopped moving, and he thumbed off his mp3 player, and he stared, and the silence rang in his ears too loudly. "Fuck," he breathed.

"Hello, Fitz," said the Doctor, straightening and looking down at him. "Mind if I come in?"

The alcohol rested in the back of Fitz's mouth, sour and unpleasant. He swallowed and thought about running, and then asked himself what the hell that would accomplish. He walked up the steps and unlocked the front door. He held it open and looked back at the Doctor for a moment. The Doctor grabbed the door from him.

He followed Fitz upstairs to his flat.

The Doctor stood in the middle of the living room, out of place but apparently unaware of it. Fitz set his guitar case down in a corner, gently. "Nice," the Doctor approved, surveying what he could see of the flat. "Don't supposed we could get a cuppa?"

Fitz didn't move for a moment. He stood by his guitar in the corner of the living room, staring down at it. The flat was silent but for the noises outside. He thought he might be sick. His head ached, and he couldn't think straight, and his stomach roiled. At last he walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

The Doctor studied the room. Dark colored paint on the walls and no windows, it was dimly lit. Bookshelves, lining practically every free bit of wall space, most filled with books but a couple units devoted to CDs. There were no clocks anywhere that he could see, no ticking he could hear. He stood by the bookshelf nearest the door, perusing titles, when Fitz came back carrying two mugs. He set one down on the coffee table, kept the other in his hands as he sat down in the beat up easy chair.

The Doctor sat down on the equally decrepit loveseat and took a sip of tea. "You remembered how many sugars!" he exclaimed with a beam, looking up from his tea.

"Didn't change with the rest of you, then?" Fitz said, and the grin was wiped from the Doctor's face. Fitz huddled further back in his chair and didn't drink his tea. "What are you doing here?"

"Just wanted to see how you were doing," the Doctor said. The expression on his face was slack, distant. "I was in the neighborhood, that's all."

"You've been in the neighborhood for the past two weeks," Fitz said. "_Stalking_ me. Why now?"

"What d'you mean?"

"I've been here for _six years_, Doctor," Fitz said. "Why are you checking up on me now?"

"This was the closest I could get," the Doctor said. His voice was soft. "Did Romana—"

"Yes," said his former companion. He took a sip from his tea in order to steady himself. "Yeah, she dropped me off here. A few decades off course, but considering how much she had on her mind at the time, she didn't do too shabby." He looked up suddenly, met the Doctor's eye. "She's dead, isn't she?"

The Doctor almost dropped his mug. After a moment, he opened his eyes and set the mug down, carefully. He folded his hands in his lap. "Yes," he said, meeting Fitz's gaze. "Yes, Fitz. She's dead. They're all dead."

Fitz hunched in further, his hands still wrapped around his own tea. "Dead," he repeated. "They're all—the Daleks? The Time Lords?"

"Everyone, except you and me."

Fitz didn't move. The Doctor kept watching him, waiting. And then Fitz shakily unfolded himself from the easy chair, set his mug on the coffee table with careful precision, and stumbled into the bathroom.

The Doctor listened to his retching from the living room. When he heard the toilet flush, he got up and walked down the short hallway.

Fitz sat with his back against the tiled wall next to the toilet, his chin tilted upward, breathing as deeply as he could.

"Fitz—"

The human flinched at the Doctor's voice. He opened his grey eyes and looked up at the Doctor. "Go away," he said.

"Fitz—"

"Fuck _off_," Fitz said, voice strangled. "Get out. Just get _out_. All of you. You, your friends, every single fucking version of you. Get out." He pushed himself upward, lunged at the Doctor. "Get _out_!" he screamed, pushing at the Doctor.

The Doctor grabbed at his arms, tried to hold him down. Fitz couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't even throw up again though his stomach twisted, though he gagged, though he was trying to pound on the Doctor and could feel tears leaking down his face.

"Fuck," he managed to gasp at last, "fuck—fuck—_fuck_!"

"Fitz!" The Doctor caught hold of his wrists and pinned them, and Fitz went all wobbly-kneed from lack of oxygen and stumbled backwards into the bathroom again. The Doctor went with him and fell hard on his knees when Fitz fetched up against the bathroom wall and slid down it, unable to bear his own weight anymore.

"Why did you tell me," Fitz found himself babbling, clutching at the Doctor's arms, staring into his stupid blue eyes. "Why did you fucking have to _tell_ me, I could've coped, I _was_ coping until you came along why did you have to _tell me_"

The Doctor grabbed at Fitz's hands, held them tightly. "I'm sorry," he said. "Fitz, listen to me, are you listening to me? I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_."

"I haven't had to think in almost six years," Fitz told him. "I've got by with the white noise and static. UNIT tried to get me on their payroll, and your bloody friend Captain Jack Harkness came round more persistently than a cat hoping for cream, and they'd _finally_ all started leaving me alone. Finally. I was getting by, Doctor. I was _coping_." He pushed the Doctor away, slumped back against the wall. "And now you come and tell me there was no fucking point. No fucking _point_." He kicked at the Doctor, weakly. "Every thing we did in your stupid war, every planet we saw destroyed, Doctor—I did it for you and it was for nothing."

The Doctor sat on his former companion's bathroom floor and couldn't look at him.

"Why did you come here?" Fitz said.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," said the Doctor.

Fitz snorted and gestured around the bathroom. "Now you know," he said. "So please. Please. Just—get out."

The Doctor looked up at him, and for a moment Fitz thought he was going to say something. And then he nodded once, stood up, and left the flat.

The silence remained behind.

 

***

Timeline Five

_Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner  
1936-2012_

The Doctor watched as they lowered the headstone into the ground, hanging back a little so he wouldn't be in the way. "Thank you," he said when they finished, and the two young men walked away with a nod each and no words.

He stepped closer, after they were gone, and stared hard at the letters and numbers carved out of the black granite. He leant down and traced the carvings. "I had to make the date up," he said. "Well, relatively it was pretty right. And this was when I found your body; saying any other year probably would have looked a little odd."

He rocked backward, his heels pressing down into the grass, the earth giving a little with the pressure. He looked at the two other headstones nearby. "I got you back to your parents at least," he said softly. "Back to your mum in the end."

He stood up, ignoring the grass and mud on the knees of his jeans. His face scrunched. "I wish I could have made you leave," he told the grave. "I wish I could have seen how you would have lived."

He walked away.


End file.
